I made a comment, too, and it hasn’t been approved yet. I’m sure The NYT will get around to it. It’s a weekend, after all, they approved “Disgusted.” But I’m posting here as well.

Please go to The NYT site and tell them “Her name is Jyoti.” Her father wants the world to know it. He is proud of his daughter. He hopes that Jyoti’s story will give rape survivors the courage to speak out. He wants the violence against women to stop, and he knows that goal is unreachable as long as the world continues to ignore the truth about women’s lives.

The daughter — whose name is being withheld because it is illegal to name a rape victim in India without permission from the victim or her next of kin — showed as a very young girl a love for school, her father remembered.

In covering this story, the U.S. media has widely referred to India’s “sexist culture.” So why in reporting this crime would The New York Times adhere to the laws of a sexist culture? Why would an American publication follow Indian law on how to report on rape? At what other time does a country’s laws dictate how its news is reported in The New York Times? If India’s law applied to political dissidents, would the New York Times refuse to print names?

We want the world to know her real name,” says Badri Singh Pandey, an airport worker who had just returned home when a Delhi hospital called to say his 23-year-old daughter had been in an “accident.” “My daughter didn’t do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.” Indian officials have refused to name her, and mainstream Indian media still refers to her as “Amanat,” or “treasure.”

Singh’s nameless daughter, “a treasure,” had an “accident.”

If a country cannot speak of rape, how can it stop it? And why is the U.S. news coverage of rape just as lopsided and distorted as India’s is?”